What were you finally most grateful for, the
sudden love that stabbed you in the heart
with the force of revenge, which you spent
a lifetime trying to explain to yourself,

or the earth, which afforded you steep
and gentle paths so that you, errant and pensive
on the land, might begin to ask questions
of love? I know what I would answer, at least

at first: I would say that the earth is my last
and only love, because in and of itself 
the earth excites the desire to wander, which 

is desire enough for me. But because desire
impeded your very breath, you would 
continue, dangerously, where I leave safely off.

Carl Wiener
July 2003

I fell to dreaming, my view disturbed
by oblique trajectories of rain
across the glass. And in this rain-dream, I
heard a rhythm in memory,
alternating with the rhythm of the
speeding train. Nothing broke
my contrapuntal reverie, and ever since
that augmented journey, long ago,
I guess I never got off the mazurka train.

And I’m not sure I heard what you
just said, either, but if you deign to repeat
it clearly, just one more time, I will
surely listen,--across the cadences in my
heart--, and then continue on my way.

Carl Wiener
September 2003